Let me say
it directly: American Jews are fed up. They have had enough. They are finished
being understanding and patient.

They will no longer accept that Reform and
Conservative Judaism are ostracized by Israel’s government bureaucracy; they
will no longer tolerate that Reform and Conservative rabbis are scorned and
despised in Israel; they will no longer sit silently while Israel’s official
representatives offend them and denigrate their religious practices.

You have
seen some of this newly aroused anger in the reaction of Diaspora Jewry to the
arrests and detentions at the Western Wall; and this is only the beginning.

And
make no mistake: The angry voices are not coming from the ranks of the
indifferent or the fringe left. They are coming from the heart of American
Jewish leadership.

But you,
in the meantime, must engender a serious conversation among American Jews about
whether or not the varieties of Judaism that they so desperately want validated
in Israel can actually sustain a Jewish future.

Many Israelis suspect that they
cannot, and I know that you share their concern. We need each other – we need
each other’s validation, but we also need each other’s critique. I hope that
this exchange is but the beginning of an ongoing exchange of ideas, and look
forward to working together for the sake of our people’s future.

[Daniel Gordis] needs
to tell us why the local Orthodox rabbi and his community should receive public
funds while we do not.

He needs to tell us why the marriages at which we
officiate should not be recognized by the state while those of the orthodox
rabbinate are.

He needs to tell us why we cannot conduct the funerals of our
own members at the municipal cemetery.

He needs to tell us by what right families
should be divided when they go to pray at the Kotel.

He needs to tell us
why the Hebrew Union College, the Schechter Institute and their respective
student bodies don’t enjoy the same level of state funding and stipends
received by the yeshivot and their students. And we serve in the army!

If Israel
could learn from the American model and implement religion in a way that does
not discriminate against women or ordinary Jews, it could meet its goal of
protecting the dignity and liberty of its citizens, without regard to gender or
religious affiliation.

In such a state, women would have the opportunity to
become rabbis hired by the government; they could initiate divorce proceedings
against men; the Western Wall rules would give full prayer access to all Jews;
the two chief rabbis would be elected or selected in a broad-based way…

“All of a
sudden there was a change in seculars in Israel — they see themselves also as a
sector that needs to fight for themselves,” said Mickey Gitzin, director of Be Free Israel, a group founded in 2009 that advocates for
equality and religious pluralism.

“People say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t see
myself as part of a society where women cannot sit in the front of the bus.’
People don’t want to be part of such an extreme society.”

“There are
elements in the making of a Kulturkampf,” said Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who
runs Hiddush, using the 19th-century German term for culture war.

“These issues
have a way of coming out and messing up solidarity, messing up politics. It’s
time to deal with them in a way that is a root canal; that’s what’s necessary.”

Aside from Jewish Home
(which significantly includes a non-Orthodox candidate, Ayelet Shaked), the
major lists highlighted moderate, Religious Zionist candidates who are devoted
to deepening Israel’s Jewish identity.

Three of these, all of whom I know
personally and two well, were elected on Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid list: Rabbi
Shai Piron, Dr. Aliza Lavie and Rabbi Dov Lipman.

These, together with
like-minded religious and non-religious MK’s have an opportunity to make a
long-lasting contribution to the stabilization of
Israeli society, and toward resolving some chronic problems.

In Israel, all
services connected to religion are administered by the government under the
auspices of the Ministry of Religious Services, which is tightly controlled by
the haredi sector.

As a result, religious services are provided according to
guidelines that belong to one section of the Jewish community, and are often
disputed by the greater community—including the observant community.

The
expression of alternate opinions or outlooks by other Jewish sectors is
strictly. Thus thousands of years of Jewish tradition, rather than being a
uniting element in the lives of all Jews, becomes a source of alienation and
contention.

I pondered on the
paradox that in America a Jewish leader of such vision and influence can be
invited to stand before senators and presidents, while not even being
considered a legitimate rabbi in the Jewish State of Israel.

This is because
she is a woman and therefore is forbidden to participate in a religious way in
any government ceremony in Israel and even if she would or could would most
likely be spit upon or spark some other outrageous act of violent protest.

In the
preface to one of his books, Lapid wrote that he is secular and has no rabbi,
but that if he had a rabbi, it would be Beit Daniel's Rabbi Meir Azari. Azari,
for his part, takes pride in being the first to bring Lapid to the bimah of a
synagogue.

"I was proud to open our synagogue to Yair Lapid, and to help
him to discover pluralism in Judaism and new horizons and ideas," Azari
said Thursday.

The effort of making a
living trains one to exert oneself with diligence, industry, and vigor. With
the experience gained from the workplace, one can apply oneself to Torah study
with greater energy and meticulousness.

Four new
Knesset members from Yesh Atid should be of particular interest to American
Jews. They offer an interesting window into what could be a new future for
Judaism in Israel and a focus for productive interactions with American Jews.

A better
solution would be take young ultra-Orthodox men out of the confines of Geula
and B’nai Brak and put them into training bases that distance them from the
influence of rabbis and community pressure.

Ideally, the Israel Defense Forces
shouldn’t have the role of educator and social catalyst forced on it, but the
fact is that has already happened because the regular school system doesn’t
fulfill its role.

Adding the Haredim to the list of recruits that need to be
trained is a perfectly acceptable burden, especially as the army suffers
manpower shortages in technology fields where young enlistees can be assigned.

Just as importantly as acquiring a modicum of
useful skills, ultra-Orthodox recruits will be put face to face with Israeli
society and inevitably adopt its norms at a time when they are young and most
impressionable.

The
reality, however, is that there is a genuine gap between Lapid’s public image
as a fighter for the cause of drafting the Haredim, and his actual plan.

Yesh
Atid’s policy on this issue was formulated by two individuals, the journalist ‏(and soon-to-be MK‏) Ofer Shelah and Maj. Gen. ‏(res.‏) Elazar Stern, former head
of the IDF’s Human Resources Directorate, who turned down an offer to join Yesh
Atid’s Knesset list and wandered over to Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party, on whose
slate he was elected to the Knesset this week.

Now Ovadia
Yosef faces a much more critical test, maybe the most difficult in his life,
against the Ashkenazi Haredi establishment, which is expected to take an
uncompromising stance against drafting yeshiva students.

As benefits swelled, and
more ultraorthodox remained in study to avoid the military, their workforce
participation fell. When Mr. Begin took power, 75% of ultraorthodox men had
jobs. Today that number is around 38%.

"The draft is a
touchstone issue because…the army is such a deeply ingrained part of
society," said Joel Katz, editor of Religion and State in Israel, a
website.

"If you don't go into the workforce, you don't contribute income
tax, you don't help the economy, you don't pay to feed your family."

If
equalizing the burden is to become a long-term national priority, then we must
realize that there is no quick-fix solution. While legislation and court
rulings can institute forced enlistment, service in the haredi and Arab
communities and elsewhere can only be sustainable if it becomes a service of
choice.

This
requires a sophisticated strategy aimed at truly changing attitudes.

Ever more
ultra-Orthodox people want to join the workforce. But neither they nor the
Arabs will accept military service.

The IDF is fat enough without them and
Israel is strong enough to respect their limitations. They can’t be forced into
the economy, not by law and not by draconian orders of a Netanyahu-Lapid
government.

The way to incorporate them is by mutual respect and tolerance for
their otherness. But that’s not on the agenda of the new Israeli revolution.

Lapid is
too weak to force on Netanyahu his plan to suppress the Arabs and the
ultra-Orthodox, which will lead to mass forced labor ("civilian
service").

In any
case there is no real need for "equal bearing of the burden," beyond
finding a formula that will satisfy the High Court of Justice.

The
ultra-Orthodox politicians understand this, and Netanyahu hopes they will agree
to sign some hollow document, out of fear of losing the child allowances and
funding for their yeshivas and elementary schools.

Second,
and most significantly: Regardless of the sources that someone might dig up/
reinterpret to claim that yeshivah and kollel students are protecting Israel,
let us ask the following: Do haredim themselves actually believe that they are
soldiers providing metaphysical protection?

If so, then from their perspective,
they are not draft-dodgers. But instead, they are deserters.

In
contrast to the empty slogans, the ultra-Orthodox do not evade the draft
because they are afraid to fight, but rather because their leaders hope to
prevent their “assimilation” into secular society.

For them to take the route
of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of neo-Orthodoxy, secular leaders
should offer the Haredim a military track enabling them to preserve their way
of life while being productive.

At present, especially considering the decrease
in Haredi political power, there is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed:
Secular leaders must show largeness of spirit and, together with the Haredim,
search for a compromise that would result in a sharing of the burden without
negating anyone’s right to live according to his beliefs.

Rabbi
Melamed offered a different idea. “The whole solution to ‘equality in the
burden’ could be very simple,” he said. “Whoever does not believe he belongs in
the army would be free to learn or to work.”

NPR:
Yesh Atid, the new political party pushing this issue, envisions a phase-in
period of perhaps five years.

But eventually, many of the Orthodox would face
possible conscription. Figuring out who has to serve could be painful. Uri
Regev, head of a group called Hiddush for Religious Freedom and Equality, says
there's only one way to avoid favoritism: A small group of Torah scholars
should be chosen strictly based on academic ability.

Uri
Regev: The selection should be done by an objective board and not by the Yeshiva
heads or the political ultra-Orthodox leadership.

Rabbi
David Stav distanced himself Monday from ads supporting his candidacy to the
post of Israel's chief rabbi.

Stav, chairman of the Tzohar organization, a
group of moderate orthodox rabbis, announced that he did not approve of the ads
published in recent weeks in newspapers and websites, and requested that their
publication be halted.

The
problem here isn't with Orthodoxy. The Rabbinate is problematic even if Reform
or Conservative rabbis, and not Orthodox ones, were to hold the top spots. And
the problem is not the rabbis, either; rabbis have a crucial role to play in
Jewish religious and communal leadership.

The problem is a state giving
governmental power and authority to religious leaders as religious leaders.
Doing so has historically led to the persecution of those who refuse to embrace
their beliefs.

… Only
abolishing the Chief Rabbinate will fulfill Israel’s promise of religious
freedom for all its citizens. And the time has come.

The chief
rabbi of Rishon Letzion refers couples who register to marry in the city to a
private company to ascertain their Jewishness, in contravention of proper
procedure, according to a High Court of Justice petition filed this week.

The Itim
institute, which advises people who encounter obstacles in obtaining religious
services, filed the petition Monday against Rishon Letzion Chief Rabbi Yehuda
Wolpe, the Chief Rabbinate Council and the justice minister.

The petition
demands that disciplinary action be taken against Wolpe and that he be
prevented from using this invalid procedure, which was aimed particularly at
immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who constitute around a fifth of
Rishon Letzion residents.

Mavoi
Satum (“Dead End”) announced on Thursday that the High Court of Justice struck
down part of an order of the Rabbinical High Court, the result of which is that
a husband refusing to grant his wife a divorce will remain in prison until the
court hears a full petition filed by the wife.

Mavoi
Satum director-general, attorney Batya Kahana Dror, said, “We are happy that we
succeeded in stopping the unethical and unconstitutional decision of the
Rabbinical High Court to free a divorce refuser from prison, the goal of the
decision of which was to conduct a jurisdictional battle between the venues
[the rabbinical and family court venues] on the backs of the women” whose
requests for a divorce are being refused.

The
rabbinical court appeared upset by Vogelman’s ruling. “This has no precedent,”
a source in the system told Haaretz. “While there have been past attempts, the
High Court has never interfered in a din Torah [religious court case] and the
way in which the batei din [rabbinical courts] interpret Torah law.”

With
regards to the High Court precedent, [the husband's lawyer, Uri] Zamburg
said: "The jailing was enforced by the High Court, and not by the Supreme
Rabbinical Court, and that is a direct interference by the civil courts in a
case under the sole authority of rabbinical law. This is a severe interference,
even more so than in a civil suit, as it is an interference of circumvention."

Attorney
Batya Kahana-Dror, executive director of the Mavoi Satum organization which
provides legal and emotional support to women who have been refused a Jewish
divorce, said in response to the figures that the Rabbinical Court
Administration would rather not reveal the real number of women refused a
divorce, and that the report was therefore incomplete.

"Addressing
the number of sanctions imposed on get refusers without comparative data is
misleading the public," she said.

"The
courts are hiding their conservative stance from the public, which sees arrest
and forced divorce as prohibited, making the get not kosher. Therefore, they
avoid forcing the reluctant husbands into a divorce as much as they can,
turning the get into a extortive bargaining chip in the divorce process.

"The
result of the courts' policy is thousands of women in Israel who have been
taken captive by their husbands and cannot move on with their lives, start a
new family and have children."

The report
doesn't say how many agunot or mesuravot get (women whose husbands refuse to
divorce them) there are in Israel, making it impossible to determine what
percentage of cases the rabbinical courts actually solved. Women's rights
groups claim there are hundreds of such women.

Thus while they welcomed the
improvement in last year's numbers, they said it is still a drop in the bucket.

According
to Hannah Kahat, founder of the Orthodox feminist organization Kolech: “If one
of the women will say she wants to take the rabbinical ordination exams, we
will back her with all our might. We will go to the High Court of Justice and
launch a struggle.”

While welcoming the development, Kahat is also cautious.
“This is a development that could strengthen the practice of turning to an
authority, instead of developing autonomy,” Kahat says about the women who
teach halakha.

'Convert,
what's the problem?' I don't want to. I am not looking for a conversion crash
course or for the Rabbinate to do me a favor and recognize me as a Jew. I am
not looking to cut corners.

I have been a part of this society for my entire
life. I want them to marry me like this. This is my country, I give it my all –
the country should give me this right. It should allow me to marry just the way
I am."

In our time when Rabbi
Uziel’s religious vision is vital to the well being of the Jewish people, we
regrettably find so much of the Orthodox rabbinic world going in the opposite
direction.

The current Chief Rabbinate in Israel has created numerous obstacles
for would-be converts.

The rabbinic establishments in Israel, the United States
and much of the diaspora have succumbed to an almost xenophobic attitude toward
prospective converts, unless those candidates for conversion are willing to
accept to live a fully Orthodox religious lifestyle.

Stringency upon stringency
is added. Candidates for conversion must often wait years before being approved
for conversion, and even then must fear that the beth din might revoke the
conversion in the future.

Ben-Shetreet is
essentially being punished for having an exceptionally beautiful voice and
wanting to share it with the world. The 12th grader has been suspended (with the agreement of
her parents) for two weeks from her religious girls’ high school in the seaside
city of Ashdod. Her offense? Singing in public.

“I think
the Torah wants us to find ways to be happy,” said Ben Sheetrit in her initial
interview. “The Torah wants music to make people happy, and I think it’s
possible to do both, which is why I came to the show.”

Ben-Shetreet
seems to be sticking to her plan of singing, and that’s admirable. But if she
doesn’t want pushback from her school, then she should wait the last few months
of her senior year to sing publicly, or she should switch schools. And if she
does want to stay in her school and sing anyway, then no one can fault a school
for following its own rules.

The
transfer of the Finance Committee from the Haredim to Lapid is more than a practical
matter; it's also a symbol of change. For years UTJ and its predecessors headed
the panel, all but viewing it as a fief. They often preferred it to a
ministerial post and advanced their party's interests while transferring large
sums to Haredi yeshivas and other institutions.

“My dream
is be to bring the American style of being Haredi to Israel. In the U.S., even
the most heavy duty yeshivas have general studies,” he points out. “The time
has come to model the American approach, and make it clear that a Haredi person
can have educational and professional success without sacrificing their level
of religiosity.”

Switching
gear, Lipman espoused a lenient approach to conversion, stating that there has
been a “rabbinic failure” on the issue.

“How can
people go to school with our children, speak Hebrew, do the army” and be
ignored by the rabbinate? he asked.

It is
“intolerable that people were persecuted in Russia for being viewed as Jews and
now they are persecuted here” for not being Jewish enough, Lipman continued.

He also
advocated a “broader conversion policy with other streams of Judaism included.”On civil marriage, Lipman declared that “it is
wrong for us to legislate anyone having to get married according to Halacha.
The rabbinate needs to be far more embracing.”

"We united. On all issues of
religion and state there has been a status quo for decades. I think it's time
to open up all the issues of religion and state, to sit and have a dialogue
about them, with mutual respect for all the factions, to find a new, complete
way to deal with this matter."

A
plurality of the public and an overwhelming majority of Yesh Atid voters want
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a coalition without haredi parties
Shas and United Torah Judaism, a Smith Research poll conducted this week found.

[Eli
Yishai’s] brave face belies a grave worry, said Uri Regev, head of the NGO
Hiddush for Religious Freedom and Equality.

“While the
haredi leadership is voicing satisfaction from their achievements, being able
to maintain their representation, and in the case of United Torah Judaism to
grow it, the truth behind those smiling faces and confident statements is a
tremendous fear and anxiety over the new political landscape,” he told the
Post.

“They understand that the long era in which the well-being of the
government depended on their goodwill, and therefore they could name their
price and get it in return for their votes, is over.”

"There
is a famous joke we (tell) in Israel," outgoing Defense Minister Ehud
Barak told CNN in an interview.

"One
third of the country wakes up to work, one third is paying taxes, and one third
is serving in the (army) reserves. Unfortunately it is the same one third. This
one third told the government yesterday 'That is it'," he said.

Ofer
Kenig, a political scientist from The Israel Democracy Institute, said the
ultra-Orthodox parties had a much reduced bargaining position than before.

"There
is a growing recognition among the Haredim too that the current situation
cannot continue for much longer," Kenig said, referring to the Haredi
exemptions from military service.

Israel's
two ultra-Orthodox parties insist that they will create a Haredi blocking
majority in the 19th Knesset.

“We will
form a blocking majority with Shas,” MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism
said Saturday night. "Half a million people voted for our parties, and
together with Shas, we're worth 18 seats. “We’re not ruling out other parties,
but our principles are clear,” he said."

High-profile
cover-ups of sexual abuse and molestation by communal rabbis and activists have
not been limited to England and the US, but take place frequently in Israel,
alleged David Morris, director of Magen, a Beit Shemesh-based community child
protection organization.

“The
absence of basic knowledge in core curriculum topics, especially mathematics,
English and computer skills, along with a lack of general study capabilities
required for academic study, turns study in these kinds of courses into a
serious challenge,” the report noted.

An analysis by
"Globes" found that the disqualification by the Israel Land
Administration of the haredi (ultra-orthodox) charities' joint bid in
Harish lots cost the government NIS 113 million - the difference between the
disqualified highest bids and the lower bidders which were declared the
winners.

The highest bids by the haredi charities, which were
disqualified, totaled NIS 248.5 million, resulting in sales proceeds of NIS
135.1 million.

Israeli
voters are fed up with that. It’s not just the need to share the burden, but
also the realization that military and civil service is the key to Haredi
integration into society, higher education institutions and the workforce.

For
all practical purposes, equal service is the key to reducing inequality and
improving the financial standing of weaker segments of the Haredi sector, Ashkenazi
and Mizrahi alike.

Deri and Yishai need to get off their high horse, drop the
victimhood and separatism and work for their constituents' integration into all
parts of Israeli society.

"The
significance of a coalition without the ultra-Orthodox," Deri added,
"which in practice is the desire today of the standard-bearers of the
conscription law, is not in fact drafting the ultra-Orthodox.

Let’s get one thing
straight: true Temple activists never speak about ‘blowing up the Dome,’ even
in jest.

Firstly, those who are sincerely involved in the movement towards
rebuilding the Holy Temple are men of integrity and peace; secondly, it’s not
funny; thirdly, it is an immature, imprudent, and irresponsible way of speaking.

Today,
learning Talmud is normal for Modern Orthodox women and most have no idea of
the battles fought to gain that access.

Rabbi Brovender's students are running
institutions in Israel and around the world. They continue his synthesis of
intellectual openness with absolute faithfulness to Jewish law and tradition.
The ripples continue and the revolution expands with more and more women taking
their learning deeper and deeper. The intellectual glass ceiling has been
removed.

Book Review: Inside the
mind of Rav Kook: Redeeming not only the world, but one's soul

The
leadership of the two communities might meet often, but we must strive for
grass-roots collaborations between the community members themselves. We must
cultivate networks of connections between like-minded communities and
organizations from both sides.

The Jewish Agency’s project “Siach” is a good
model: Israeli and American social justice organizations talking to each other.
The AJC recently brought together Israeli and American activists on concerns
over the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, showing that rather than this being an Israel
vs. America controversy, there are strong alignments between the communities on
both sides of the issue.

The Jewish
Agency for Israel increased the number of emissaries it sends abroad by 20
percent in 2012 – Yehuda Setton, the organization’s director of long term
emissaries told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Apostolate
Renê Terra Nova, the head of the International Restoration Ministries in
Manaus, Brazil, has brought tens of thousands of Christians to Israel over the
past 10 years and says that his followers “leave this country in love and
become ambassadors of Israel.”

The
background is that last month an Israeli television report alleged that Ethiopian immigrant women were coerced
into taking contraceptive shots in transit camps in Ethiopia when waiting to
move to Israel, and continue to receive the shots in Israel.

Gamzu’s
letter came in response to a letter from Sharona Eliahu-Chai of the Association
of Civil Rights in Israel, representing several women’s rights and Ethiopian
immigrants’ groups. The letter demanded the injections cease immediately and
that an investigation be launched into the practice.